Libera Dreams

To all our US friends Happy Thanksgiving

It's a few days away, it's always on a Thursday.

Hi Tully
Yeah I was a few days early, better than late I hope.

Happen you can enlighten me? I seem to have heard (here or elsewhere) that Thanksgiving was originally a different day which moved (like Easter) but early last century (20th) a President changed it to it's present fixed Thursday. Have I got this right?

While tradition has it that modern day American Thanksgiving originated as a celebration befun by the Puritans the year that they landed in Massachusetts, that's not strictly true. The Puritans did have a harvest feast, an English tradition, that year, but their actual first proclaimed Thanksgiving celebration was in 1630. Virginia had a Thanksgiving celebration before Massachusetts did, and for that matter the Hudson Bay Company colonies in Canada had been celebrating Frobisher Day beginning in 1578. New York and Conneticutt had their own Thanksgiving Days as well. The Continental Congress established a completely unrelated Thanksgiving Day for each year during the revolution to give thanks for surviving and noit being hung. Most of these Thanksgiving days were in September or October, one was in June. It was Abraham Lincoln who standardized Thanksgiving day as the last Thursday in November. FDR changed the date to the fourth Thursday in November. The true reason that Thanksgiving is linked to the Puritans is primarily because the nation's mass media originated in the major cities of the north east, where the pilgrim history was better known.

my knowledge increases thanks Tully. I love tp learn